Uninterested reading

September 23rd, 2009 • chatter, education
Tags: education, music

So I’m over halfway done with Disorderly Women by Susan Juster and I’m still struggling to become interested in the book. The actual content is fascinating enough, sure, but Juster has failed at every attempt to grab my interest by simply being a boring writer. Maybe it’s that I find her style of writing-via-quotes-and-citations boring/annoying. Unfortunately, I’m still trying to figure out the actual point/hypothesis of this book and I’m over halfway through it already. Separating her own information from the flurry of quotes (other writers and church documents) is both difficult and time-consuming given that I’ve found most of the content of the book itself is quotations. I don’t find this occurring as often in anthropology books or in most history books I’ve read, so perhaps this is some kind of women’s history schtick? I have no idea how I’m going to write a three page paper on a book whose point I still haven’t understood (or found). This is why I don’t take subjective history classes. I hate wasting my time wading through ego or fluff information to have to discern a minuscule point.

On another note of annoyance, I don’t like Leaves’ Eyes new CD Njord. I can’t say this CD is boring however, it’s definitely not that good to me. The content of the CD has swayed far from Vinland Saga‘s stories and elegies to the Scandinavians of old and was put together very well musically. However, Njord seems to have kept the musicality of the first CD while stripping out any interesting stories from the songs. This CD is another album about Nordic conquests however, I really fail to see what Vikings and Scarborough Fair have in common since they would not have been frequenting Scarborough in the Middle Ages. I understand this is a cover song but really, it belongs as a bonus track or the end of the CD as it interrupts the flow of the CD. Most CD arrangements are either a V or a descending plateau arrangement. This means that in a V arrangement, the CD starts off strong, has an average/weak middle, and a (hopefully) strong end. A descending plateau is just as it sounds: starts off strong and flutters out as the album goes on. Having Scarborough Fair at track 5 of 12 smacks this straight into V territory as it’s simply in the wrong spot on the CD. The rest of the CD has strong, upbeat tracks and this is just a very odd arrangement especially for Leaves’ Eyes whose last few EPs and last CD had excellent arrangements.

The great kick off

September 8th, 2009 • chatter

It was Labor Day weekend and that on Thursday with Boise State beating the pants off Oregon (and the ensuing punch Oregon back LeGarette Blount doled out to Byron Hunt) and ended with a tough fight with Miami edging out Florida State last night. Boise State looked great this year as did Florida, BYU, USC Trojans, USC Gamecocks, and Navy! I couldn’t believe that Navy nearly upset Ohio State, who won in the last few minutes of the game. USC Trojans ran all over SJSU but Matt Barkley made a great start as a true freshman and helped the Trojans on to their hefty win.

There are some good games coming up this weekend but it’s going to be very focused on big games like USC Trojans v Ohio State. I think the real winners will be the regional games like Auburn v Mississippi State or even the upcoming University of Central Florida game.

I have no idea how I’m going to do all my classwork with all this important football to watch! Now, if Thursday would come so I could watch Clemson beat Georgia Tech.

College: Where people pay big money to do nothing

September 3rd, 2009 • chatter

As I sat in LIT4930-003 yesterday, I had a real revelation. Aside from vacations, college is the one thing that I know of where people pay handsomely to do as little as possible and still expect a reward at the end. Yesterday, our professor was asking some very basic questions such as where did the Bible come from and why the books are in the order they’re in. Well, most responses to the former question were “the bookstore”, “Walmart”, or something equally asinine. It took a good fifteen minutes of constant asking and drilling through answers to figure out we get the Bible from religious institutions. However, the latter question took longer as it was more than apparent most people did not do the required reading at all. Which is extremely sad given the fact that we had to read the first chapter of The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Coogan. If you’ve ever seen these books, they’re slightly larger than a 3×5 index card and are less than 150 pages thick. Our reading was the first chapter, a total of 12 pages. Twelve. Pages. In a normal sized book, that text would have comprised less than six full pages, probably even less. That took me just a few minutes to read and I’m a slow reader. I read Genesis in about 2 and a half hours and in my Bible, it was only 56 or so pages, so I’m not exactly a fast reader. The time between classes at FAU is more than enough time to have read the first chapter of the book. Maybe it’d be different if these were all freshmen but it’s not, it’s almost all juniors, seniors, and Learning For Life students.

I just ran across a video of a “chupacabra” recently found in Texas. This goes along with people not reading things in school. So Jerry Ayers says it’s “like no coyote he’s ever seen” but is so obviously canine in form and modality. So this guy’s never seen a canine with long, sharp canine teeth, basically hairless with “leathery” skin, and “longer than normal” legs. Has he ever seen an actual coyote then?! Aside from being hairless, that’s a coyote. Now, it’s probably hairless because of disease akin to the mange or another skin disease. Gee Jerry, I’ve never seen a hairless canine either with “leathery” skin. Except chihuahuas. And all those other hairless dogs with leather-like skin. I need to find something stupid to get on CNN so I too can have a pointless fifteen minutes of fame.

And I just had to watch this after finishing my Ancient Israel mapping project. I will never get those brain cells back.